Paydirt

5

Nine days later…

Bobby sat next to Christine in the back row of the owner's suite in Mustangs Stadium. Her bandaged left knee was propped on a pillow on an adjacent chair, and she swallowed a Percocet every two hours. She'd come out of surgery ready to go back to work, though it would take months for the torn ligaments to heal.

Now, Bobby and Christine watched Dallas taking on Washington. Bobby held Christine's hand and shot glances at his son Scott in the front row of the suite huddled with Martin Kingsley, who kept a rolled up game program gripped fiercely in one hand, a pair of binoculars in the other. The boy and his grandfather were inseparable on game days. They spoke football jargon to each other between plays, high-fived after Mustangs touchdowns, strategized at halftime, and hugged when the final gun signified a victory. In these moments, Bobby almost felt warmth for the man who made his life so difficult.

If he loves his grandson, he can't be all bad, right?

"Blitz, blitz, blitz!" Scott yelled.

"Got him! A sack!" his grandfather fired back, smacking his grandson affectionately on the shoulder. "Good call, Scott."

Christine barely paid attention to the game. She was speaking rapidly into one of the many phones, explaining to an angry sponsor that his upper deck sign would be visible on TV again, as soon as stadium security tore down the homemade banner inadvertently obscuring his invitation to the Durango Saloon. Christine's spirits were upbeat as usual, even though her bandaged knee throbbed.

There was a stir in the suite as Dallas intercepted a pass and took over the ball at midfield. They trailed 10-7 early in the second quarter and needed a win to take over first place in the division. In the stands, the hometown fans began pumping up the volume.

"Did you make dinner reservations for tonight or did you forget?" she asked Bobby.

"Forget our anniversary? I remember the day we met. The Mustangs wore gray; you wore blue."

Christine smiled and nodded toward the front row where Scott was cheering. "Someone's having a good time."

"Scott's as addicted to the game as your father. Last night, I caught him devising a power rating to beat the point spread."

They watched Stringer complete a deep pass down the sideline, and the cheering echoed through the stadium. At the bar in the rear of the suite, someone watching the game on TV shouted, "First and ten at the twenty-one!"

"So where are you taking me for dinner?" Christine asked.

"To a candlelit dining room between our kitchen and the den."

"You expect me to cook?" She shot a look at her leg.

"Not you, me. I thought you'd be too uncomfortable in a restaurant."

She gave him an affectionate squeeze. "You're right. Thank you, darling. So what's for dinner?"

"Your choice. Snapper in white wine sauce or hamburger on the grill?"

"Why do I think I should order the burger?"

"Because I know how to make it?"

She laughed, and Bobby turned back toward the field where Stringer took the snap and backpedaled, side-stepping a blitzing linebacker.

"Nightlife's open!" Scott shouted from the front row.

"Hit him, Craig!" Kingsley yelled.

"Touchdown!" someone else cried out.

The stadium erupted in deafening cheers.

Bobby derived more pleasure watching his son enjoy the moment than from the play itself. Scott whirled toward his father. "Didja see that, Dad?"

Bobby gave his son two thumbs up.

"How 'bout them Moo-tongs!" Kingsley yelled.

"Awesome, Grandad!" Scott replied, and the two exchanged high fives.

It was a family joke. When still a toddler, unable to pronounce "Mustangs," Scott told his grandfather that he loved the "Moo-tongs." The name stuck and was even picked up by the Dallas sportswriters.

Bobby turned toward Christine who was waiting, puckered up. Another tradition, along with barbecue on Friday nights and church on Sunday mornings. When the Mustangs scored, so did he, with a long, lingering kiss.

As their lips touched, he felt the familiar surge of warmth run through him, and in that moment, he made a decision to live by.

I can put up with old Daddy-in-law. I won't do anything to jeopardize what I have.

A moment later, before their lips separated, the phone in front of him rang, a discordant jarring that rocked him out of his mellow mood.

Bobby picked up the phone as the clock ticked off the last few seconds of the first half. Dallas was ahead 14–10, but Bobby was oblivious to the score, indifferent to the future of the team. As the Assistant District Attorney spoke to him, Bobby felt feverish and his head throbbed.

A warrant had just been issued charging Wilbur "Nightlife" Jackson with sexual assault.

"Date rape, if you want to call it that," Larry Walters, the A.D.A. told him on the phone. "Name's Janet Petty, a cocktail waitress at the team hotel, single mother with a two-year-old at home. Nightlife invited her up to his room after her shift. They smoked some weed, drank some tequila. She told him she had to get home to her kid. He grabs her at the door, drags her to the bed and-"

"Star fucking groupie," Bobby said, playing defense lawyer, saying his scripted lines, repressing what he feared was true. "C'mon Larry. She went to a player's room at one a.m. and got stoned. It'll be her word against his on consent."

"She's got two broken ribs and assorted bruises to prove it, plus she passed the polygraph this morning," Walters said. "Did I mention she holds two jobs, goes to community college and sings in her church choir?"

Damn, a nightmare victim.

"Kind of ironic, isn't it?" Walters asked. "You lock up your players in a hotel to keep them out of trouble, and look what happens. Hey Bobby, you don't need coaches, you need jailers."

Walters wanted to know if Bobby would surrender his client in the morning for a quiet booking and immediate bond hearing, avoiding the media circus. Nightlife would be on the street within ninety minutes. The wheels of justice are well greased for the rich and famous.

"Yeah, I'll have him there," Bobby said. "And thanks, Larry."

"Don't mention it. By the way, I'll expect four playoff tickets by hand delivery."

Bobby hung up and slipped down to the first row. Crouching next to Kingsley, Bobby was a humble supplicant, whispering the bad news. Kingsley reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of hundred dollar bills in a silver and turquoise money clip.

"Take care of it with the woman," Kingsley said. "Let her know there's more where that came from. Get a final number from her and do the paperwork tonight. You'll want her signature on a release before some contingent fee shyster gets to her."

Bobby looked up at Kingsley from his catcher's crouch. Now was his chance. If ever he were going to stand up to the man, this was it. But then, hadn't he just promised to play it safe? Didn't he owe it to Christine and Scott? Waves of conflicting emotions tore at him, and he reached one inescapable conclusion: he lacked the balls to do what was right..

"You know the drill, don't you, Robert?" Kingsley asked.

"Know it? Hell, Martin, I invented it."

— 6 Bagman

Bobby drove to the hospital with Kingsley's wad of cash bulging uncomfortably in his pocket. He felt disembodied, numbed, as if under an anaesthetic.

I'm to blame for this. I'm the one who got Nightlife off the first time.

Was this his penance? Was a wrathful God bringing him here to lance the boils that festered on his conscience? He felt weak, as if his spine were made of leaves, wet and mushy from the rain. He tried to rationalize.

It's my job, dammit! If it weren't me, it would be someone else.

His thoughts turned to his boss. What was Kingsley thinking now? Surely not about the woman sedated in a hospital room. No, only whether the Mustangs hang tough for another win. Back-slapping along the sidelines as the last seconds tick away, then some quips for the sportswriters.

The nurse's station was deserted, the staff huddled at the end of the corridor in the visitors' TV room. Bobby heard the familiar background noise of the football game. IV's and bedpans could wait; the Mustangs were on the tube.

Bobby could feel his pulse quicken as he let himself into Janet Petty's room. She seemed to be asleep. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut, and a spot of dried blood stained a bandage at the corner of her mouth. An African-American woman in her early twenties, she probably was attractive when her face wasn't swollen from a beating.

Bobby's legs felt heavy as logs, and his breathing became so labored, he worried his exhalations would wake her. Looking at her, battered and bruised, his heart thundered in his ears, as if beating itself to death in some rocky cavern.

"Are you a doctor?" Janet Petty asked through parched lips. Her eyes had opened, tiny slits in the swollen flesh. "Because if you are, I'd just as soon have one who's not wearing a Mustangs shirt."

"I'm the lawyer for the team," Bobby said, taking on the role he despised.

Her laugh was a parched and humorless cough. "The D.A. said you might come around. I'm not gonna sign anything, so you can just go talk to my lawyer."

I have a job to do, so do it!

"I'm not here to get you sign anything," he said. "The team management simply wishes to assist you in your current situation."

"I don't have a situation! I've been beaten and raped."

Bobby reached into his pocket and withdrew the wad of hundreds, crisp as fresh kindling. Surely, somewhere on the planet, he told himself, was someone who was sleazier, scummier, more reprehensible than his own miserable self.

"Isn't that what lawyers do, Bobby? Make excuses, settle cases, get people off?"

Maybe it is, Chrissy, but once I pictured myself as Atticus Finch, standing tall for justice…and look at me now.

He started peeling off the bills, letting her see Ben Franklin's picture, trying to whet her appetite.

"The D.A. told me not take any money from you," she said.

"No obligation," Bobby told her. "We just thought you could use some spare cash for babysitters, food, doctors' bills. Then, when you're feeling better, we could bring some paperwork by."

Jesus Christ, how did I sink to this?

"No way," she said. "You talk to my lawyer. He'll be by later."

"Lawyers," Bobby said, rolling his eyes. "I hate to say it, but sometimes my brethren just slow things down, muck things up."

"I'm in no hurry," she said, shifting her position on the pillow, wincing with pain.

Beaten but proud, refusing to be buffaloed by the fistful of hundreds. "The D.A. told me he'd done it before."

"What?"

"Nightlife. That he raped another girl, but that it never got into the papers. Had I known, I never would have gone up to his room."

Bobby started to say something about everyone being innocent until proven guilty, but he bit off the words like a strand of thread.

"Did you know about it?" she asked.

Bobby sucked in a breath but stayed quiet, his own silence bearing down on him like a tombstone.

"Of course you did." She propped herself on an elbow, grimaced as if someone had just lodged a dagger between her ribs, then sized him up. "You're his lawyer. You're probably the one who hushed it up, aren't you?"

"I…" He wanted to say he was only doing his job, but it sounded so pathetic, he swallowed the thought.

What kind of a job was that? What kind of a man am I?

"How do you sleep at night?" Her swollen eyes filled with tears. "What do you see when you look in the mirror?"

Engulfed in misery, he put the money back in his pocket. "I want to help you. I really do. Forget who I am, or what I came here to do. If there's anything I can do to help…"

"Put your client behind bars."

He wanted to tell her it didn't work that way. The system, you know.

"I can't." Feeling empty.

Janet Petty turned her head toward the wall and spoke so softly Bobby could barely make out the words. "After they gave me the sedatives last night, I dreamed about that animal. He was biting me and clawing me, dragging me down and soiling me…"

"I'm sorry," Bobby said, his voice dry as burned paper. "I am so very sorry." His pity extended to both of them. He stepped closer to the bed and reached out for her arm, but when he touched her clammy skin, she recoiled and screamed.

"Get out! Get out of my room!"

She frantically reached for the buzzer, her face twisted in pain, and Bobby fled, fighting back tears of his own.

— 7 A Gutless, Spineless, Soft-Bellied Shyster

Bobby wound his way through the bowels of the stadium, working his way toward the locker room where a cacophony of sounds echoed off the walls. The game had ended half an hour earlier, a Dallas victory, as if that mattered in the grand cosmic scheme.

Reporters circled players, jamming microphones into their faces, pleading for grunted tidbits of wisdom. The floor was slick with sweat and shower spray, littered with soggy towels and wads of tape. Filthy uniforms were flung into laundry carts. An occasional victory whoop was heard, as the players celebrated defeating Washington, their long-time rivals.

Bobby waited until the reporters edged away from Nightlife, having asked the same question a dozen different ways. Bobby was constantly amazed at how complicated the sports writers tried to make a game that was essentially blocking and tackling, throwing and catching.

"Hey, whas-up, 'Meanor?" Nightlife asked him. The nickname, "Misdemeanor," which always bothered Bobby, infuriated him now. A former defensive back had coined it after Bobby convinced a judge to reduce an attempted murder charge to simple assault.

"We have to talk," Bobby said.

"Talk's cheap, but Nightlife ain't."

Nightlife looked at Bobby with innocent, doe-like dark eyes. He had a child's face and a slightly buck-toothed smile that only made him seem even more boyish and guileless. Bobby considered him a narcissist and pathological liar.

"Hey man, you're not still pissed about your old lady, are you? Wasn't my fault." He was naked except for a white towel wrapped around his midsection. He was shorter than Bobby, one of those quicksilver wide receivers with explosive strength and Olympic speed, a gazelle who darts across the middle unafraid of being crushed by ornery linebackers who outweigh him by fifty pounds. If not for his highly developed pecs and trapezoids that seemed to connect his shoulders directly to his head without need of a neck, Nightlife would have resembled a teenage camper headed for the bunkhouse showers.

"That's not it," Bobby said, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him toward an adjacent room where the offensive unit held its meetings. The room resembled a lecture hall with writing-desk chairs, a raised stage and a blackboard covered with "x's" and "o's."

"I'm here about Janet Petty."

"Never heard of her. She want an autograph?"

"She says you already tattooed her."

Nightlife's features were expressionless, his eyes bored.

"Last night, your room," Bobby said. "She claims you raped her."

"Hey, lawyer man, do I look like I gotta force 'em?" He cocked his head, pointed with both index fingers to his presumably innocent face and showed a smile that was more of a wink, a nudge in the ribs.

"You tell me. This is the second time around."

"Shee-it! Old story, 'Meanor. Bitch complaining 'cause I tossed her out, didn't ask her number. She was moaning and groaning last night but feels used and abused in the morning."

"Jackson, don't bullshit me. I'm your lawyer. The woman has a black eye, a split lip, two broken ribs, and contusions on her inner thighs."

"Nightlife got a tool like an anaconda. Maybe she got bruised trying to ride it."

"I said, don't bullshit me! We went through this before with the perfume counter clerk."

"Right. How much is this one gonna cost me?"

"How about five to ten in Huntsville?"

"That ain't funny."

"Neither is rape." Bobby's headache had spread down his neck and he hunched his shoulders like a bear. "I should never have gotten you off the first time."

"What!" Nightlife jammed the heel of his hand into Bobby's chest. It was the same move he used to separate himself from a defensive back, a short push that disguises the power behind it. Bobby winced and took a step backward.

"Your job is to get me off!"

"No, my job is to make the state prove its case."

"If it's her word against mine, how she gonna prove it?"

"Did you rape her?" Bobby shouted. His legs felt unsteady and he knew his face was reddening. "Did you rape Janet Petty?"

"I did that 'ho better than she ever been done, then I came out here today and won the game. People pay good money to see me catch the ball and boogie in the end zone. They don't care who I fucked or how I fucked her."

"Did you rape her!"

The player's shrug seemed to say, what's the big deal. His mouth was twisted into a mask of scornful derision. "Maybe she said to stop, but Nightlife was past the point of no return."

"You ought to be put away." Saying it with more sadness than anger.

"And who's gonna do it? You, 'Meanor? Your wife's got bigger balls than you."

"I'm going to talk to Kingsley."

He turned, but Nightlife grabbed his shoulder. "You do that, lawyer man! You tell the King. He knows who totes the mail, and it ain't you. I pay your salary! I am the main attraction and you're just an usher for the show."

"You have an inflated opinion of your own worth."

"Mr. K. thinks my worth is eleven million dollars a year plus performance bonuses."

"When I talk to him, he may decide you're more trouble than you're worth."

"If you had eyes up your ass, lawyer man, you still couldn't see shit! You don't have the power to touch me. You're a bitch just like that 'ho from last night."

Bobby stepped close to Nightlife, invading what trial lawyers call the personal zone. He'd never lean over the rail and breathe on a juror this way, but just now, Bobby ached to get in Nightlife's face, and they stood nose-to-nose. Bobby knew the athlete could flatten him with one punch, but it didn't matter.

"Okay tough guy!" Bobby yelled. "We know you can beat up cocktail waitresses and perfume clerks. What about me? You want some of me?"

"Shee-it!" Nightlife said, mocking him. "Aren't you the guy who gives the lectures to the team every year? 'Some night you're gonna be in a bar, and some fool's gonna jack you up, challenge your manhood. But men, you gotta be the ones to back down, you gotta be the ones to say no.'" He cackled with laughter. "So, 'Meanor, I'm saying 'no' to sticking my Nikes so far up your ass, you're gonna have swooshes coming out your ears. I did my job today. Now you go do yours!"

Holding onto his towel with one hand, Nightlife turned and walked back to the locker room.

On his way to the parking lot, Bobby concluded that his client was right.

Nightlife knows my job better than I do. My job is to protect the corporate assets. To wheedle and cajole judges, to obfuscate, confuse and muddy the issues. To warp illusion into truth and polish dung into gold. His job was to set Nightlife free so he could abuse some starry-eyed young woman all over again.

He felt untethered, floating free in a dark cold space like a lost astronaut, caught between what he knew was right and what he was paid so handsomely to do. For years, he'd longed to cleanse his soul. How low had he fallen? He wanted to change, but how? Did he even have the courage to take on his father-in-law? In the battle for his soul, had he already surrendered the prize?

"Have you a criminal lawyer in this burg?"

"We think so but we haven't been able to prove it on him yet. "

— Carl Sandburg, "The People, Yes"